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Harrison's Flowers | Year: 2000 Classification: Drama Directed: - Elie Chouraqui Actors/Actresses: - Andie MacDowell - Scott Anton War is Hell...but didn't we know that? Harrison's Flowers is an interesting and intense look at the 1991 war in Croatia. Andie McDowell portrays Sarah, the wife of a Newsweek war photographer (David Strathairn) presumed dead somewhere in Croatia. The film starts in New York's Newsweek building and we see the journalists dismissing the war as ethnic skirmishes. Sarah rents a car in Graz and gives a ride to a Croatian going to get his wife and child out. As they cross the border the killing starts. We run into Serb Chetniks and Croatian forces as they kill everyone that can find. The war scenes are very realistic, capturing the horror of that war. Usually it's focused on the victims after they're killed, the scenes implying all the terror and horror that occurred. Sarah travels with a group of photojournalists toward Vukovar where the war is most intense, all in an against all odds attempt to find her husband. A few comments: the fiction of the story is obvious, as if this really occurred it would probably be one of the most famous stories of the war. And the vehicle used for introducing the Western viewer has been done many times: inject an innocent American into the blooshed. Also remember the Croatia war lasted a couple months with about 10,000 dead....the soon after The film ends back in the safety of New York...until September 11th. And it's dedicated to the 47 journalists who died, not the hundreds of thousands of other innocent people. If only the West stopped it...well history is made up of "if onlys". A woman's love is challenged by the madness of war War photographers must feel a sense of impotence while plying their trade. They record the horrors of violent conflict, but can do little to stop it. Pictures may not always even provide a context for the slaughter and mayhem. Harrison Lloyd (David Stratharin) is married to Sarah (Andie MacDonald) and they have two small children. He concludes that it's time for him to find another line of work. Taking pictures of flowers is not only safer, but also benefits the human race. Harrison, however, is asked to accept one more assignment. The year is 1991---and the location is the former Republics of Yugoslavia. Sarah shortly thereafter is informed that Harrison is presumed dead. She refuses to allow her family to perform the Kaddish, for Sarah is convinced that her beloved husband still remains in the land of the living. The odds might not be favorable, but Sarah will not be deterred from looking for Harrison in the war zone. Adrien Brody portrays Kyle, a junior member of the profession who feels obligated to assist Sarah in her apparent hopeless quest. Sometimes wars are fought between the clearly good guys versus those representing the side of pure and unmitigated evil. Alas, this troubled region is being torn apart by brutal ethnic cleansing. The very concept of morality and mercy is alien to these monsters. Nihilism reigns supreme and no one regardless of age or gender is considered untouchable. Even adolescent girls run the risk of rape, and combatants casually put a bullet into the most innocuous of their fellow human being. The warring factions care little about distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent. It is perceived far easier to simply murder everyone. Director Elie Chouraqui has created a masterpiece. Harrison's Flowers deserves an Academy Award nomination for best picture. The cast is magnificent and the film is visually stunning. It is a love story about a married couple committed to each other and the values they hold dear. Some people have unfairly criticized Chouraqui for not being able to make sense of the Balkan's mess. In other words, they're presumably upset that Chouraqui does not claim to be God. Is there anybody, after all, able to explain the practical and existential meaning of this fairly recent apocalyptical nightmare? I wholeheartedly recommend that you see Harrison's Flowers. This Film Tells the Truth About War I watched this movie for two reasons: I like Andie MacDowell and my last name is Harrison. I liked this movie because I am a Viet nam vet that fought in Tet and therefore I have some considerable experience with war in a city, or as the Army used to call it War in a Built Up Area. If you have actually seen this kind of war, the movie is frighteningly accurate and like war, necessisarily fragmentary and incomplete. For example, in one perfect and horrific, scene Andie MacDowell and her two journalist companions are moving through a city to find a hospital where her husband may be. They come upon a situation: a young child, probably a girl runs out of a building in front of them. A soldier follows her out of the building, and kills her. War's brutality? Certainly. A killing mad soldier, killing an innocent child. Possibly. But, even more likely, the scene represents wars brutality on multiple levels. If you knew that the child had just thrown a hand grenade and the soldier escaped it but his buddy, or even more likely in this kind of war, his actual brother did not would that change the nature of the scene for you? Or, if that was true and you knew that the child had another hand grenade, or a pistol, would that change your impression of the meaning of the scene? And how about that soldier many years later as he looks down at his own child, assuming he survives the war, will he be able to forget the look on that other chid's face as he shot her? However good his reason and in real war there are many reasons that can make such an act necessary, will he be able to forget, or will it haunt him. This kind of awful situation, but not unusual situation, is precisely why William T. Sherman said that "War is Hell." For a soldier, having killed a child for any reason must be true Hell, but to have done it on purpose. That would be worse. While I avoided shooting at children, the reality of war among civilians is worse than you could ever imagine even in a nightmare. Say you are a sentry and there is a car speeding toward your post. You open fire. The car stops. Your post is safe. But it turns out that a child is dead. The car was speeding to get to the hospital. That is war in the city and all you have is an instant to make up your mind to shoot, or not to shoot. To kill, or not to kill, and either way to live with the aftermath. Do the sailors or Marines on watch on the USS Cole wished that they had fired. Even if their orders were not to fire. Even if the approach of the boat with a bomb in it did not look like an attack. Even if a child had been steering the boat with a bomb. I have no doubt that they all wished that they had fired. And they will wish that, and relive that, until they too die. In that sense they are as much causalities of war as their shipmates that suffered actual physical hurt. The Captain of that ship, the Officer of the Day, the Watch officer all will relive and replay that day and regret that no one fired soon or oft Buy Harrison's Flowers at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Harrison's Flowers Search with the Priority Search Engine on Harrison's Flowers This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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